Letters
by TopKat
Summary: In his cell, Sirius isn't given the privilege of paper and quill, so instead, he writes letters to James in his head. siriuscentric, Azkaban


**Letters**

In his cell, Sirius isn't given the privilege of paper and quill, so instead, he writes letters to James in his head. By the time he has started planning his escape, has starved so thin that he can slip out, he has 'written' so many letters to James that he gets confused as to whether they are his letters to a dead man or conversations they actually had. He can't write to Remus, because he saw the look in Remus' eyes when he stood on the witness stand, and the dementors won't take that away, and he just wants to forget. He doesn't write to Peter. He hopes Peter is dead.

He doesn't dream, either. Not in the traditional sense – somewhere in between losing his inhibitions about shitting all over himself and losing the ability to distinguish daylight from the dark, he starts dreaming when he is awake, or dreaming that he is awake, and then forgetting the difference. He talks to James then, too.

James looks the same in Askaban as when Sirius last saw him – he lies splayed in the corner of the room, skin grey and washed-out, a large, mottled bruise staining the skin over his face. His arms hang at strange angles. His eyes never blink, but are open, staring at the ceiling. Sometimes Sirius goes to lie beside him, because it is just a dream, and pretending James is here, even dead, makes him feel better. Sometimes, like when they last saw eachother, there is a pallid blanket in his hands, holding an equally pallid child. Sometimes Lily is on the floor, blood in her hair, both turning black. Sometimes no one is there at all. Sirius can't talk to them; he writes letters instead.

He asks James how he is, how Lily is, how they are 'getting on' - lascivious wink included. James coughs and burbles and groans, sometimes, but otherwise is largely uncommunicative, choosing instead to stare at Sirius from the corner of the room as dust settles on the whites of his eyes, and his mouth hangs just slightly open. Sometimes James will rise from where he usually echoes their parting pose, and draw himself up in the corner, back rising to attention, sliding against the wall, pulling his knees up so he is hunched over them, blue and white, mouth still hanging, eyes glassy. He says even less then – as Sirius cowers and shrieks and claws at himself, at the walls, and tries to compose a letter that will make him forgive, will erase the blame and the pity from those big, brown eyes. But James, in this mood, is not to be reasoned with.

Long after he finally slips through the bars, long after starving in holes and ripping things with knives and thinking only of death, long after looking at the eyes from the witness stand, and seeing something he can no longer recognise, Sirius sees James every night, still the same, still crouched in the corner, his knees rock-steady, his feet planted firmly on the floor. Even with Remus like a mother in the big Black house, stroking his hair, whispering over and over _it's not your fault, please, shush. Sirius. Sirius. Sirius. Please._

He forgets his name. Forgets most things, on a day to day basis, tries and fails to acquaint himself with the boy who is almost-James but knows it is pointless when the real one sits at the foot of Sirius' bed every night, sits in his head in the day, sits on his chest, holding the baby, eyes wide and asking, every moment that Sirius continues to borrow his breath.

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><p><em>Yet another dark one! I suppose I feel like i can't really grasp Sirius' insanity, the sadness of what happens to the marauders as a whole, so i keep trying over and over? Either that, or i listen to too much melancholy music(!) Anyway; review if you read, and if you have read anything of mine previously, there's a sort-of-sequel to "Feet Of Clay" in the works, which i'll be posting once it's all put together. thanks very much for reading, and if you review, i shall always reply - and thankyou to anyone who's added me to favourite authorsauthor alert recently, you make me blush! xxx_


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